Certified Irish Angus initiatives honoured with two awards by Guild of Agricultural Journalists

At an awards ceremony in the RDS Dublin on Friday last, a Certified Irish Angus brand initiative and its sister brand, Northern Irish Premium Angus were honoured at the prestigious Guild of Agri Journalism Awards 2020.

‘Best Covid Communications Campaign’  was awarded to Gemma Smyth Communications for its brand repositioning campaign in the year of Covid and ‘Best Targeted Campaign’ was presented to MF Communication for the communications campaign for the schools competition organised by the Northern Irish arm of Certified Irish Angus.

Best Covid Communications Campaign

Certified Irish Angus celebrated 25 years in business in 2020 and although it had notable recognition within the Irish agri-food industry, it did not have as much awareness with Irish consumers. The organisation embarked on a significant project in 2019 in order to reposition the brand as relevant to the modern Irish consumer.

Gemma Smyth Communications worked with Certified Irish Angus to plan a number of initiatives and events to reposition the brand in 2020, but the impact of Covid-19 meant that all of the planned activity had to be revised. Going back to the drawing board, a strong digital-first communications campaign was rolled out in its place to support the brand repositioning.

This included the use of innovative tactics including a comprehensive social media strategy for the brand, collaborative activity with well-respected food and sports content creators to develop recipes and media partnerships with print and online agri-media outlets. The digital-led campaign proved to be a huge success with strong results across all tactics used resulting in enhanced consumer engagement with Certified Irish Angus.

Best Targeted Campaign

In 2018, the NI arm of Certified Irish Angus, the NI Angus Producer Group, partnered with ABP in Northern Ireland to roll out the ABP Angus Youth Challenge, an agri-food skills development initiative. It was modelled on the successful Certified Irish Angus Schools competition which has been running in the Republic of Ireland since 2013.

Now in its third year, the strong integrated communications campaign supporting the ABP Angus Youth Challenge on behalf of ABP and the Northern Irish Angus Producer Group was recognised with the Award for Best Targeted Campaign.

ABP was also recently recognised with a ‘2020 Responsible Business Champion’ Education Partnership award by Business in the Community for the ABP Angus Youth Challenge and in 2019 it was the recipient of the Farming Life ‘Best Agriculture Promotional Initiative’.

Speaking about the awards, Charles Smith, General Manager, Certified Irish Angus said, “We are really thrilled to have two of our initiatives recognised at such a prestigious awards ceremony and I would like to thank our communications professionals across the island of Ireland for their hard work and commitment.”